


give us black dreams

by liesmyth



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Extramarital Affair With Your Least Favourite Friend's Spouse, Marriage of Convenience, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26868349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/pseuds/liesmyth
Summary: “You’re in love with her brother and she’s in love with a dead man. You’ll need all the luck you can get.”
Relationships: Francis Abernathy/Camilla Macaulay/Richard Papen
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Writing Rainbow Black





	give us black dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peachis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachis/gifts).



The party went on all night. There were high laughs and clinking of glasses, the autumn air brisk with the promise of rain. Camilla looked beautiful in a pale blue dress, cool and ethereal like a woodland nymph. Francis’s hand was low on her back and he laughed loudly and often. They both wore laurel crowns woven through with red berries and treads of gold, for good health and prosperity.

Well-wishers came bringing gifts and promises, expensive kitchenware alongside the best custom-made spells on the East Coast. The Abernathy family was small but well-connected; there were few relatives and hundreds of acquaintances and hangers-on. A handful of the faces I recognised from Bunny’s funeral, but none of the Corcorans were in attendance, as it was to be expected. They’d been furious, back in Hampden, after it had all come to light, raged and asked for weregeld, but nothing had come out of it. Everyone who dabbled in the arts knew that sometimes sacrifices had to be made, and calling a god’s attention on oneself wasn't always a good thing.

I watched them all night, in between bouts of mindless conversation with flushed guests I wouldn't remember in the morning, a woman with roses in her hair and a young man with satyr eyes who tried to get me into bed. I smiled back politely and ignored them all, and when finally the trickle of guests had dwindled for good I made my way to the happy couple.

“Nice ceremony,” I said.

Earlier, Camilla had slaughtered a goat on the altar with a silver blade. There was still a splatter of blood over her wrist, a stark red circlet against the pale skin.

“How are you, Richard?” she asked, at the same time as Francis said, “I noticed we didn't get a gift from you. Is your presence enough, you think?”

“I brought you this.” I took out the small box I kept in my pocket and showed it to them. It held twin gold ringlets, small enough to slip around a little finger. “I charmed them myself.”

Francis observed the box’s contents with that intent frown he got sometimes, and I wondered if he was regretting his own lack of practical gifts. I hadn't been shy about lording it over him back in Hampden, and sometimes when I thought back to those days the weight of my carelessness overwhelmed me. We’d all been so young.

Then Francis said, “If I put this on, will I turn into a frog?”

“It's for luck. You're going to need it.”

“Oh, will I.”

“You’re in love with her brother and she’s in love with a dead man. You’ll need all the luck you can get.” I said it with no bite, but a small hint of bitterness. Francis was quick to hone in on it.

“Yes, but she still married me, didn’t she?”

“Boys,” Camilla said, her voice low and melodic. “No here.” And then, to Francis, “You haven't told him, have you?”

“I could barely get him on the phone.” That was the truth. California had kept me busy.

“Richard.” He turned to me. “Do you remember my proposal, all those years ago, that you rejected so quickly—"

“We're trying to get you into bed,” Camilla said.

I looked from one to the other, Camilla's otherworldly beauty and Francis's insufferable smirk that I found myself so fond of. She smiled at me. 

“You know how the night ends.”

She held out her hand, and I took it. I don't remember how we left the hall or if we met anyone on the way, but I remember Camilla slipping out her shoes in the elevator, Francis grasping her hand to kiss her fingers and then turning towards me, beckoning.

In the honeymoon suite they had mulled wine and freshly-cut vervain, and the smell of it reminded me of another dawn long ago before my life changed forever. But this time I hadn’t fasted, not were we about to summon a god to partake in the pleasures of the flesh, not when we could take care of that ourselves.

Instead, Francis kissed me then went to his knees right there on the hotel carpet while Camilla watched from the bed with the impish smile I loved dearly. Out of her expensive dress she was no longer a vision of sophisticated grace, just a young woman who laughed as I kissed down her chest and sighed softly when I licked into her, groaning from the things Francis was doing with his hands.

Afterwards, when I turned around in the bed, well-fucked and boneless, I caught Francis staring at me with silvery eyes. He had that cast to his features that meant he wasn't seeing me but Seeing me, and I shivered.

“You’ll stay,” he said, with all the certainty of an oracle, although I hardly needed a soothsayer to tell me that. The bed was comfortable and Camilla's warm body even more so, curled into my side. Francis smiled in that sharp way he had, the grin that was all teeth.

“I will,” I said, and just like that, a new pact was sealed.


End file.
